The "Audacity" of "Pragmatism"

The way forward after the Senate's climate failure.

Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline.

As of yesterday, it looks like we’re gonna go with decline. Prosperity was over-rated anyhow. That’s what seems to be the message, anyway, from DC, where “pragmatism” from leaders has resulted in a complete capitulation on any substantive climate and energy bill.

I’d like to avoid hyperbole and hysteria, but it’s actually somewhat difficult to overstate the magnitude of the loss. The death of serious carbon policy in the Senate is a very bad thing. For more on that, see Dave Roberts at Grist, which is what you should usually do for smart commentary on climate politics.

Deep breath.

Take a stiff drink.

Okay, now take another stiff drink.

Ugh.

So now what? Basically, we’re left with two sub-optimal but viable options in the near-term, plus maybe a third a little later.

state and regional action, such as RGGI and the Western Climate Initiative.

The first one—EPA regulation —is fairly straightforward. Now that the Supreme Court has clarified that EPA does, in fact, have the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a threat to human health, it should knuckle down. It’s time now for EPA to start doing so in a comprehensive and aggressive way. One very good place to start would be direct regulation of coal plants.

Another, ultimately more effective, version would be for EPA to institute a carbon cap-and-trade program, ideally one that is economy-wide. The EPA has already proven itself to be a smart and efficient administrator of cap-and-trade programs. So we’re talking about an agency that has the experience and know-how to do it right on a larger scale. And we’re talking about an opportunity to do it without the pigpile of pork-barrel industry giveaways that can happen in a legislative setting.

Yet if EPA does not pursue its own cap-and-trade program for carbon, there are myriad opportunities for reducing emissions through direct regulation. On that score, I’d be remiss not to mention World Resources Institute’s excellent new analysis that details exactly how this could be done. Here’s the key chart:

The second option—state and regional action—is also fairly straightforward. Existing regional programs, such as the fully operational RGGI program in the northeast US and the still-in-development Western Climate Initiative, should pick up the baton. Perhaps they should even consider melding. RGGI has the virtue of a successful track record, while WCI has the virtue of a genuinely comprehensive and large-scale approach to carbon.

The third option is also important to consider. That’s the possibility of alternative approaches to comprehensive carbon pricing. The most obvious contender is Senator Cantwell’s CLEAR Act, which has already been introduced in the Senate. Another possibility might be federal or state carbon taxes, though there are currently no live policy proposals to push forward.

It’s highly unlikely that either of these alternatives stand a real chance in the next few months, but giving them some air now might help bolster their prospects under the next Congress, and may even provide a chance to bridge the deeply partisan carbon divide. And if the feds are unwilling to act, the onus may return to the states where, after all, there are deep revenue holes to fill.

So that’s basically the landscape as I see it. It’s certainly not good, but neither is it hopeless.

What’s worth bearing in mind, I think, is that politics are bizarre, and punditry is something of a fool’s game. What’s politically impossible one moment can become politically mandatory the next. It’s happened dozens of times before, but it’s never happened without concerted and sustained effort from citizens. That means you.

Power our brains! We’re a reader-supported nonprofit.

Comments

civiletti

July 23, 2010 at 1:51 pm

Action by Atlantic and Pacific coastal states is a possibility. They are more blue than red, and therefore more green. Concern for rising sea level is stronger on the coasts. Forget the Gulf states, though – they are presently complaining about the moratorium on off-shore drilling, even as oil is washing up on their shores. Also forget the interior states. They are more likely to outlaw teaching of climate change science than to do something to cut CO2 emissions.EPA regulation looks like the way to go. Does Obama have the balls for it, and will congressional Democrats back him up if he acts? I hope we find out.

Civiletti,I wouldn’t entirely dismiss the interior states. There’s a coalition of Midwest states that has moved forward on developing cap & trade programs, though it’s been somewhat stalled recently as folks have waited for the feds to move and other politics have developed. In addition, WCI includes a number of Rocky Mountain states. It’s very tough to know what the future holds for regional action, but I’d be surprised if at least some interior states don’t step up.

As I’ve been watching the Senate (undemocratic and broken as it is) fail in its attempts to rise to the challenge of launching a clean-energy economy and a post-carbon future, I’ve been reading Taylor Branch’s absurdly fabulous biography/history of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.No two major legislative efforts are ever parallel, and historical analogies are never route maps.But I’ve been struck by the lack of a true groundswell for a climate law, yet. Not that many of us haven’t tried for it. But we have not yet succeeded in galvanizing the kind of game-changing public uprising that’s needed.Oh, and finally, one option that you’ve neglected to mention is the one I described in Winning on Climate May Require Reforming the Senate: http://rss.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2010/07/06/winning-on-climate-may-require-reforming-the-us-senate

Eric,I hope you are correct about the landlocked states. Certainly there are many environmentally concerned people in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Colorado. Remember, though, that all those climate-change denying and fossil-fuel boosting Senators come from states where they have considerable support.Ending the Senate filibuster could be helpful. We will see how the Democrats fare in November, which will effect how much chutzpah they have in January.

Perhaps these insightful quotes from an article in yesterday’s Miami Herald can help us all—individually and collectively—move forward. J. Baird Callicott, a professor and the chair of the department of philosophy and religion studies at the University of North Texas, was speaking to reporters specifically about the Gulf oil disaster, but his thoughts apply to any environmental issue:”In some ways it made me sick; it’s like the Gulf is—in a tenuous kind of way, a philosophical kind of way—an extension of my own body. If we can all begin to think this way, have a bit of what deep ecologists call ‘self-realization’ … in which we realize our embeddedness in the environment, then it becomes personal… We’re not from Mars wearing a spacesuit. We are intimately connected with the natural environment.”

Stay up to date on the Northwest's most important sustainability issues.

Research Areas

Founded in 1993, Sightline Institute is committed to making the Northwest a global model of sustainability, with strong communities, a green economy, and a healthy environment. We work to promote smart policy ideas and monitor the region's progress towards sustainability.